a very little romance - phoenix, az 1965

“WANNA DO IT?” asked The Quarterback.  We were parked out past Thunderbird Road, the lights of far-off Phoenix blazing across the floor of the empty desert.  To the east, whirling dust devils hopped across the barren landscape, touching down, popping back up and then splintering off into dust. The air was soft and warm and his biceps were bulging beneath his crisp, white, short-sleeved shirt.  

Well, this was going rather well, I thought.  A year ago, the popular senior/football captain/royal prom court hottie would never even have asked a sophomore nobody like me out.  I wasn’t sure what changed, but I wasn’t asking any questions.   A couple more of these romantic dinner-less dates and I'd officially become Girlfriend of the Quarterback: gateway to Prom Princess.  

The Quarterback pulled a bottle of Tequila from beneath the Mustang’s seat, yanked his tie around to release his thick brown, vein-popping throat and took a swig.  

 “Want some?” he asked, shaking the bottle to make sure there was enough for us both. 

 “No thanks. Not thirsty.” 

I couldn’t believe this was happening.  This was exactly what I was going for in life.  Excitement! Adventure! Romance! Okay, a series of romances, if truth be told.  Leading up to The One, my own true love, whom I'd finally marry—some day far off in the future when I was worn out from all the excitement and adventure and romances I intended to have in the meantime.   

The fact that my father let me go out with The Quarterback at all was a miracle right up there with Jesus walking on water.  And that’s because I was born a teetotaling virgin.  Okay, let’s face it, we all were.  The difference was I was expected to stay that way until the day I married the piano player at church—whoever that happened to be when I turned 21—and toasted my nuptials with sparkling cider along with my parents and 300 of their closest right-wing, fundamentalist, born-again Christian friends.  

“We doin’ it, or what?” asked The Quarterback, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.   
    
“Huh?”  I’d almost forgotten him, I was so busy figuring out how to get my dad to let me marry him. 

“Well, toots?” 

And what is this “It” of which you speak?—I did not ask.  I knew it couldn’t possibly be The It because nobody in high school did That It. There must be some other It I didn’t know about.  Of course, I couldn’t admit I'd never heard of This Other It, what with The Quarterback being a sophisticated senior and all.  So instead, I asked, “I donno. Do you?”  

The Quarterback assured me he did. 

“So, you safe?" 

Yet another puzzling question.  I thought on this first of many dates, we might talk about football or something else I wasn't remotely interested in. But, nooooo.  Instead we were talking about something I had no idea what we were talking about.  And I was fairly certain it wasn’t about rats in my beehive because I was wearing my hair in a flip that night. 

Rattlers?  Scorpions? Gila monsters? Jackalopes? Nah, those weren’t even real.  

Flying saucers?  Okay, sure they were known to show up in remote locations such as Phoenix, Arizona, circa 1965.  But why didn’t The Quarterback just check the sky for himself?  What an odd fellow my future boyfriend was.  

Oh, duh!  The Hook Guy!  

The true story went like this:  There’s this couple out parking when they hear on the radio there’s a one-armed loony headed for Lover’s Lane.  The girl freaks out and wants to go home. The boy wants to stay and have an orgasm. The boy gets ticked off and peels out.  And then when he goes to let her out, there’s a bloody hook hanging from the door handle. 

Eeeekkkkk!!!!

I checked to make sure there were no hook guys about.  

“Clear!” I announced, gaily.  

Aside from a few more perplexing questions, The Quarterback wasn't much of a talker.  I was a little disappointed about no meal and no movie, but I figured this might even be better.  We’d’d have a little chat, maybe a bit of above-the-neck necking if we ran out of things to chat about--

“Anytime you wanna stop, we’ll stop.”  

“Huh?”

“C’mon, work with me here!  I'm meeting the guys behind Pedro's for a fight at ten.”  

“Anytime I wanna stop, we'll stop?”  

“That's the deal, Pussycat.”

Well, who could say no to that?  I figured I'd just wait around to see what the It turned out to be. Then I could yay or nay, depending.  Meanwhile, anytime I wanted to stop, we’d stop.  

That settled, The Quarterback took off his tie. 

Okay, that made some sense because it was a tad warm out here in the desert, after all. 

Then he took off his shirt.  

Okay, not THAT warm.   

Off came his shoes.  His socks.  

Meanwhile, what was I taking off?  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Not so much as an earring.  And my clip-ons were killing me.  
Then I heard it.  

Zzzzzzip!!!!!!!!!

“Stoooop!!!!!!!!!”


UNFORTUNATELY, The Quarterback out to be very anti-groovy about the whole stopping thing.  He peeled out faster than a couple with the Hook Guy hanging from the door handle.
   
The next day, I passed the quarterback in the breezeway. He pointed at me and started faux-yanking his ding-dong while his pals dissolved in laughter.  And that's how I found out The Quarterback was going around saying we’d done It. 

Yup, The Real It.  Because, as it turns out, there is no other It.

It took six weeks for me to formulate my revenge.   Back then, Fry’s Food Store employed cute high school boys to follow the ladies out and unload their groceries. The Quarterback was one of those guys.  One afternoon, I became one of those ladies.  When we reached my parents’ Rambler station wagon, I dropped the bombshell.  

“I’m pregnant.” 

Ka-boom!  The Quarterback looked like he’d been hit by a linebacker.  

“You can’t be,” he stammered. “I never touched you.”  

“Well, I know that, and you know that.  But there’s all those people—”   

In 1965, a good Catholic boy getting a girl pregnant meant one thing: a wedding where firearms were involved.  And although The Quarterback knew the baby couldn’t possibly be his, with DNA testing not yet invented, what’s a poor bag boy to do?  

Take back the bragging, is what.  Which was exactly what The Quarterback did.  And then, he spent the rest of the school year waiting for my water to break.  

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